1.4.1-Orlofsky
Brick!Club epic catchup: 1.4.1-1.5.13 FLLLLEW VS BOOKS: THE LES MISERECKONING I… have time for stuff again! It is amazing. 1.4.1 — One Mother Meets Another *LOLing at the Julie Rose translation: The Thenardier’s inn is now a ‘greasy spoon’ and Fantine has an idea that she’s on the brink of ‘sliding down skid row’. *If I hadn’t already known that the Thenardiess was awful, I’d feel bad for her the way she’s described — it’s apparently horrible that she’s tall and masculine, but if she does something stereotypically feminine like read romance novels, that’s supposed to be bad too? because she’s working class or something? Like I’m fine with the idea that the Thenardiess just can’t win, I just wish she just couldn’t win because she’s a horrible person, not because she’s large and poor and likes ridiculous books. :/ *Actually there’s some pretty gross judgements that continue here from the Fantine section earlier, like I feel kind of as though the narrator thinks poor people don’t deserve to think about love and romance or really anything except Virtuous Hard Work :////// *DEAR VICTOR HUGO: I ONCE CALLED IN SICK BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO STOP READING FANFIC ON AO3, PLEASE TELL ME EXACTLY HOW FAR BACK I HAVE SET THE ENTIRE WORKING CLASS IN DOING SO THANKS IN ADVANCE '1.4.2 — Initial Sketch of Two Shady Charaters *I wonder what a lower middle class person/relatively well-off worker in Hugo’s time would have thought of the description of their class in this chapter :/ *Small things that could have changed the entire course of the novel — what if the Thenardiess had been into a different kind of novel; what if she’d modelled her marriage on Balzac or something instead of historical romances? How different would things have gone if she didn’t have this awe of her husband? *Still all this ATTN WOMEN: ROMANCES WILL ROT YOUR MIND business is leaing me with a real bad taste in my mouth and a desire to read some soppy fanfic or something out of SHEER REBELLION *Sincerely yours, a working-class person whose mother named me something pretentious WHAT OF IT '''1.4.3 — The Lark *nooooo *noooooooo ;__; *Wait, the cat doesn’t eat everyone’s leftovers, does that mean the Thenardiers cook for their cat or WTF *noooo '''1.5.1 — A History of Progress in Black Glass Beads *Where did JVJ learn enough about the manufacture of glass beads to revolutionize the entire industry in three years *Or was it just some stroke of luck, like he was like OH NO I’M OUT OF RESIN, SHELLAC IS KIND OF LIKE RESIN, LET’S SEE WHAT HAPPENS *Or is making black glass not as complicated as I think? Because it seems like it should involve like, chemistry and shit '''1.5.2 — Madeleine *I really want to think that Madeleine insists on such strict gender separation in his factory because he knows how vulnerable working women are to ''pretty much everyone and is trying to build a slightly misguided 19th century version of a safe space, not because he thinks that if he lets his female workers meet men they’ll become raging sex maniacs, buut IDK there seems to be a definite double standard between “be an honest man” and “be an honest woman” sooooo *Julie Rose translation lulz — the school in Montreuil-sur-mer is a ‘nasty shack’, which isn’t anachronistic but is somehow still funny '1.5.3 — Sums Deposited with Lafitte *JVJ how do you know so much about everything when you just learned to read like five minutes ago *but still you break into people’s houses to leave them money THAT’S KINDA CREEPY *dying at the idea that JVJ lives in some sort of gothic mausoleum, also that the girls who went to investigate his “grotto” apparently nosed around deeply enough to notice the ''hallmarks on the candlesticks like are they examining all his belongings so closely or '1.5.4 — M. Madeleine in Mourning *Blindness vs. light metaphors hmmmm *All this adoration and codependence and stuff sounds nice in theory, but as someone with eye problems the best I’ve been able to get my life partner to promise is that if i go blind he’ll try not to move the furniture into my path on purpose or at least not laugh too hard after he does *not gonna lie I prefer that to this kind of creeeeeepy satisfaction yikes bienvenu never thought i’d be calling you a creeper but '''1.5.5 — Dim Flashes of Lightning on the Horizon *Translation hilarity: highfalutin, really? '''1.5.6 — Father Fauchelevent *One of the few chapters where JVJ’s struggle between doing the right thing and not doing the right thing is shown through external forces rather than only inside his head: a good chapter *Because later on it’s all in his head, but here the three different sides of the argument he always has with himself are really well distinguished between the townspeople and javert and himself *And it’s why JVJ is one of my favorite ‘upright’ characters in fiction, because he always has this three-way argument with himself where he recognizes that good results might come of letting himself slide into any given moral grey area, not just for him but for the people around him, and that he has lots of really valid and non-self serving excuses for not doing the right thing, but then after making all kinds of excuses to himself and figuring out a pretty airtight argument for why he shouldn’t, he goes and flings himself under a cart or back into prison to save Champmathieu or behind a barricade and AAAA JVJ YOU ARE REALLY GREAT '''1.5.7 — Fauchelevent Becomes a Gardener in Paris *So yeah I guess he did that *This chapter could also be named Javert Awkwardly Avoids The Mayor *or In Which People Who Have Money Tend to Pay Their Taxes (or in the hypothetical Julie Rose translation of this title, In Which People Who Have Money Pay Their Taxes Whodathunkit) *or Good Things Are Happening to Fantine But Hey, Remember How We Already Dropped the Other Shoe Like Eight Chapters Ago '''1.5.8 — Mme. Victurnien Spends Thirty-Five Francs on Morality *It really makes me sad how Fantine never questions the systems behind her slide to the bottom ;__; *And really there’s kind of a parallel between Mme. Victurnien and Fantine here? Because Victurnien also had her romantic mistake in the past, with a man who apparently treated her badly, but because she had married him and was a widow, and has money and property, she is forgiven by society at large for running away with a monk, whereas Fantine’s illegitimate child is unforgiveable. '''1.5.9 — Mme. Victurnien’s Success *Fuck you, Victurnien *just *fuck you *THE SADDEST PART IS THAT SHE HAD TO GET RID OF HER BIRD like imagine if your life is that sad and your child is far away and you have literally one friend in the entire town and then you have to GET RID OF YOUR PET BECAUSE YOU CAN’T FEED IT brb hugging my cat *fuck you victurnien and your space alien sounding name '''1.5.10 — Continued Success *These chapter titles are just getting more and more blackly sarcastic, aren’t they D: *This chapter always sends me spiralling into horror because it seems so chilling that some unsuspecting rich person would then buy dentures made from Fantine’s teeth and just put them in and wear them, but is it that different from any given person today not knowing whether the clothes they’re wearing were made at that factory in Bangladesh that collapsed or whether the fruit they’re eating was harvested by slaves? Still, dentures back in the day were made from human teeth and I can’t imagine anyone just selling their teeth out of their head just for a bit of mad money or whatever, every denture was probably made from 32 different stories like Fantine’s '''1.5.11 — Christus Nos Liberavit *HAVE WE REACHED PEAK SARCASTIC CHAPTER TITLES BECAUSE I CAN’T SURVIVE MUCH MORE OF THIS *Laying down a tragic story of someone’s life crumbling around them and then devoting an entire chapter to just blasting society for allowing it to happen: my favorite Victor Hugo thing '''1.5.12 — The Idleness of M. Bamatabois *Really appreciating all the fashion stuff here *I just watched this scene in the 1932 movie, and a few of the bystanders were like YEAH KILL HIM FANTINE! which i very much appreciated, because yeah, kill him, Fantine *Fantine I’m cryyyiiing because you waited too long to snap, you deserve to get angry for yourself, what if you’d found this core of violence in your spirit from the very beginning and walked out of that restaurant, dragged Tholomyes from that coach, and tore his face off, what if that '''1.5.13 — The Answer to Some of the Municipal Police’s Questions *Once again, the primary occupation of the citizens of Montreuil-Sur-Mer appears to be other people’s business *''Oh Julie Rose whyyy: ”I wasn’t some slut living in a pigsty” *AHH PARALLELS, I LOVE PARALLELS SO MUCH but *''"And at the very moment when she had just insulted him in the most heinous way, he had saved her! so, had she got it all wrong? Did she therefore need to transform her whole soul? … she felt the awful blackness of hate dissolving and evaporating inside her and she felt something indescribably warm and wonderful well up in her heart; it was joy, trust, and love."'' WHY DON’T YOU JUST HIT US OVER THE HEAD WITH IT VICTOR HUGO Commentary '''Pilferingapples YAY, you’re back! With pictures! I love the pictures! 1.4 This should be the study guide for this book. Imagine the class discussion! "The Lark: Nooooo.NOOOOOOOO. Do you agree? Why or why not? SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENT." I am torn about the romance novel/”in between class ” thing, but I’ve gone into that on other posts, so, moving along… M.Madeleine in Mourning YAY SOMEONE ELSE WITH ME ON THE BLINDNESS THING, this is creepy right, it is not like blindness makes a person incapable of movement or whatever, WHY DOES HE NEED THIS LEVEL OF HELP. (and I like your life partner’s attitude. My own beloved always tells me he’s doing awful things with my hair when I can’t see. OUR DARLINGS ARE JERKS and somehow that’s waaaay more comforting than this “oh joy she MUST SERVE ME because I AM HER WORRRLLLLD” thing. BISHOP WHY.) So glad you’re back! Hope you’re staying for a while-your commentary cracks me up, and it has become apparent that I can use all the possible laughs to survive this story.